By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
The Glendive City Council will likely vote on placing a new 180-foot communications tower next to city hall at its meeting this Tuesday.
Glendive Fire Department Chief George Lane approached the city Finance, Utilities, Property and Recreation Committee on Wednesday to ask permission to build the tower behind city hall in the area of the “Firemen’s Park.” After a long discussion during which committee members raised multiple concerns about placing a 180-foot tower next to the historic city hall in downtown Glendive, they ultimately agreed to recommend that the full council vote to grant Lane permission to have it built there.
The community has received a grant to build the new communications tower. Dawson County Disaster and Emergency Services coordinator Mary Jo Gehnert said in a phone interview Friday morning that she applied for the grant at Lane’s request. The grant award is for $200,000.
Gehnert noted that the proposed new tower would not just be for the city’s communications, but would also house the county’s emergency responder transmitters. Currently, the city and county’s law enforcement and emergency responder transmissions are carried on a smaller tower in the parking lot of the Dawson County Courthouse.
“The tower that we have now has no room for expansion,” she said.
She said she has a new repeater for the Dawson County Sheriff’s Office transmitter, but there is no room on the existing tower to install it.
Gehnert also said the existing tower poses a safety hazard, as there is a gas tank at its base that “sits right next to the street” to fuel emergency power to the tower. She said if a car ever had an accident and hit the tank, the results could be deadly.
“It’s kind of a safety issue to get rid of that tower, but the main reason is it’s obsolete,” she said.
Lane said at Wednesday’s FUPR meeting that the new tower needs to be placed somewhere in the downtown area so that police and emergency responders have adequate radio coverage in the downtown area, especially when they are inside downtown buildings. Lane said that precludes placing the new tower out at the law enforcement center, for instance.
The new tower would be a much larger and much more intrusive structure than the existing tower, Gehnert noted.
“We don’t know what size it will be yet until the engineer looks at it, but it’s going to be pretty large,” she said, referring the the base of the tower.
The size of the proposed tower led FUPR committee members to question the wisdom of rushing into a decision to build it right next to city hall.
“Why do you have to have it right here – a 180-foot tower – I don’t get it,” Councilman Mike Dryden said.
Besides arguing that the tower needed to be somewhere downtown for purposes of adequate radio coverage, Lane responded that having the tower next to city hall would “be more convenient here.”
Public Works Director Jack Rice raised concerns about taking away from the already limited parking at city hall when Lane proposed that the new tower would go up next to the “small parking area” next to the Firemen’s Park.
“That’s just what we need is fewer parking spots around here,” Rice said.
Lane countered that the tower “is not going to affect” those parking spots, but would instead primarily take up space in the small park area. Lane said he was keen to locate the tower there to “take some of this grass area away” so city firefighters have less grass to maintain.
Councilwoman Avis Anderson raised concerns about placing the tower next to city hall because, she argued, the city needs to begin looking at renovating the building, adding onto it or potentially building a new city hall altogether. She said the tower could prove an impediment against any future plans for the building itself if placed right next to it.
Councilman Rhett Coon suggested it might behoove the city to wait and consider options for putting the new tower at the city water treatment plant, pointing out it is slated to undergo a multimillion dollar renovation within the next couple of years.
Waiting on that may not be feasible, however, as Gehnert noted in her interview Friday that the grant money must be spent by Oct. 1, 2017 or it will be taken back.
During the FUPR meeting, Lane said he was simply asking for permission to build the tower and not for input on how the tower should be engineered or where it should be located.
Initially, the committee members resisted making the recommendation to the full council to go ahead. Dryden summed up the conversation to that point, noting that once the city gave permission to build the tower next to city hall, there was no turning back if they did not like the end result.
“It seems like we’re going whole hog and we don’t know the whole hog here,” Dryden said. “Once you grant that permission, no matter what happens to it, you’ve given that permission. And if this proves to be more problematic than what it sounds like right now, are we stuck with it?”
“I don’t think any of us are opposed to it, we understand the need,” Anderson added. “But I don’t know ... all the sudden you’ve got something sticking up in the middle of town. I’m looking at aesthetics ... I’d like to know what kind of structure we’re looking at.”
Lane responded that he would “keep (the council) in the loop” during the engineering and construction process and that he was “not going to build something half-ass.”
Mayor Jerry Jimison backed Lane’s request and suggested that the council give the request their approval, arguing that since they have given their approval for other entities to construct improvements on city property, they should not quibble with doing the same for a city department.
“You gave Revive Glendive permission to build the splash park on city property, you gave the Fitch Foundation permission to build the skate park on city property, you gave the Glendive Tennis Association permission to construct tennis courts on city property,” Jimison said. “It’s not like we don’t give permission to construct (on city property).”
With Jimison’s comment, the committee’s objections appeared to dissipate, and without discussing the matter further, they agreed to bring the matter to Tuesday’s council meeting with a recommendation to go ahead and give permission for construction of the tower.
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.